Shana Teugels Blog

as i mentioned i’m shaping sheets in different kind of materials. i shaped metal, copper and impulsively putted a flame on the object so the metal started to look more liquid and ‘baroque’. as i burned the metal i burned a shape i made out of a plastic sheet. the reaction was very surprising to me, while i was burning the plastic i became al curly at the borders and liquid parts became wholes. the result was a very ‘rococo’-looking object. the ‘kitsch’-potential became clear when i sprayed some very artifical pearlshine on it. it had the look of an airbruched toy. i want to make jewelry with this material, based on the idea of kitsch with its ‘clichés’. 

a few years ago, i met someone who’s husband died long time ago. he was a diamond sharpener and his woman still had a room full of his stuff. because she had no space to store all of this things she gave most of it to me. one of these things was a box filled with little enamelled stones with flower patterns and playingcards and even a windmill. the fragility and especially the nice colours of the drawings and the background made me enthusiastic about them. i already used a few of them in a jewel, but i will absolutely make more including one or more of the small objects. very very cute.

in an other box i found facetted stones that where probably in a bad condition or just failed sharpenings. most of them are small and not very special, but on the bodem of the box, like a piece of trash, there was a big glass stone with nice colours and a metal-like bottom, also a little damaged, but still very niccccee. i like it very much.

most of my work is kind of grafical, a shape bild up out of a flat sheet of plastic or metal, or just leaving the sheet a sheet and even drawing on it. in a way i want someting to make these things less ‘mathematical’, less ‘fragmented’.

maybe in an unconscious way i made few things past 2 years that are more organic and more ‘human’ or a mix between human and nature. for example rings made out of hollow metal shapes putted together in a sculpture reaching over the knuckles of the hand to protect them. the sculpture did not feel like a protecting thing, it felt to cold and it looked to hard and not in a whole with the hand. so i dipped the rings into latex and made them white with a spraycan.

i like the drips that froze during the dryingproces and the ‘membranes’ that arose. the ones fragmented sculpture became a whole and a different shape.

the drippings are also present in a necklace i made a year earlier. it was an experiment without a goal. just for fun, but with a cool result. i dipped little spheres into varnish for ceramic and smal drips made the spheres look as if they were melting.

later i made a neckpiece out of it. and because i loved the folding and twisting of the sheet-like flat rectangle i started to do the same proces in metal and made some rings out of this ‘technique’.